Following the very active debate on the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange following the announcement of the publication of the Digital Participation in Scotland report I thought it worthy of a brief summary of some of what had been said and the concepts that had been considered. A key element of the debate was about participation (or e-participation), democracy (or e-democracy), and ultimately what the terms mean and how they can conceivably be measured.

David Newman, part of a group that produced one of the big ideas for the digital agenda (diagram presented at http://cirn.wikispaces.com/Putting+users+at+the+heart+of+the+Digital+Agenda+for+Europe) pointed to the failing of the report that it didn’t meet the latter two of the four stages people go through when integrating digital tools into their lives and work: 1. Accessibility, 2. Skills and competences 3. Effective use 4. Empowerment.

I then supported him stating my own argument is for feedback loops as standard, that are consistently employed to change systems. However my BIG concern is that government and therefore participation is so BIG that even those elected or employed in it can’t appreciate the magnitude/complexity, so how the hell does the citizen? This brings with it the issue of where to start and end feedback loops. I entirely agreed that the measures named were of little use and had argued this point endlessly!

Andy Williamson supported this saying his research “clearly shows that engagement becomes effective when you ask, listen, respond, and act”. Professor Stephen Coleman agreed with the preceding arguments whilst asking “which metrics should the report have been measuring?” Ella Taylor-Smith, inquiring about the strategy the report was linked to, raising the issue that digital participation was described in another Scotish strategy as “people’s ability to gain access to digital technology, and understand how to use it creatively. Increased digital participation can improve people s quality of life, boost economic growth and allow more effective delivery of public services.” Which hardly the conventional definition of e-participation. Andy Williamson then went on to raise the matter that there appeared to be no actual ‘voting citizens’ involved in the charter.

At about this point Steven Clift jumped in with a lengthy commentary around work he was due to publish on ‘Inclusive Social Media’ – there were an extensive number of measures in the proposition. Pedro Prieto-Martin of CKYOSEI stepped in suggesting that it was a matter of differing definitions. He also mentioned their own paper “The e-(R)evolution will not be funded” which paid some attention to evaluation issues, especially around EU-funded projects. Pedro was also concerned at the number of evaluation criteria that required collection and analysis. He then pointed out that their association claimed that the best way to advance the field was to “closely align eParticipation research with citizens and civil society needs”. ( http://www.ckyosei.org/docs/EParticipationResearchOnServiceOfCivilSociety.pdf ) He proposes viral growth, satisfaction, and impact as potential measures.

Ella reported that they also used a final analysis based on input, actions, output, outcomes and impact in the final results report of the HUWY project. (Avalilable here: http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/c/publications/publicationid/13367375 ). In terms of definition she preferred that of Ann Macintosh – “use of information and communication technologies to broaden and deepen political participation by enabling citizens to connect with one another and with their elected representatives” Macintosh, A. (2006) eParticipation in Policy-making: the research and the challenges . In P. Cunningham & M. Cunningham (Eds.) Exploiting the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications and Case Studies; IOS press, ISBN 1-58603-682-3, pp.364-369, which seems a pretty good one to me too. She also directs to a wider view of participation – http://pathwaysthroughparticipation.org.uk/. Ann Macintosh also concluded her contribution by informing us that she has “been working recently with colleagues, Simon Smith and Jeremy Millard, considering the issue of eParticipation evaluation. The results of our study can be found in a paper soon to be published in the International Journal of Electronic Governance. In it we present a framework for evaluating eParticipation, distinguishing between factors which lie at least partly within the control of the stakeholders in an eParticipation initiative and factors which are largely external. It uses a three-layered impact assessment framework distinguishing between outputs, outcomes and impacts. Its multi-layered character is intended to prompt evaluators to consider links to high-level policy goals, culturally-specific understandings of eParticipation and the chain of transformations which condition long-term impacts. In this way one can, not only, move from outputs to impact but also select different evaluation criteria depending on purpose/stage.” This is a paper that should prove very interesting.

One of the difficulties in the debate is the difference in political structures between the US and the rest of the democratic world. My own view is that in representative democracies, participation is difficult to deliver without potentially tilting the balance of the representatives power, so they don’t tend to be in favour of it – something I labelled in my dissertation one of the ‘antinomies of e-government’. The issue of definitions is not unusual, again in my dissertation I spent a number of pages going through a range of definitions of ‘e-government’ before even trying ‘e-democracy’, which is equally debatable, as will be ‘e-participation’.

P.S. My apologies if I’ve missed or misquoted people – it did go on for pages…and its all here on Democracy Online.

A long-time lurker on the W3C e-government group, J.H.Snider, posted links to his 2001 commentary in Government Technology, E-Government vs. E-Democracy where he argued “that it is harmful to equate e-government with e-democracy reform because the motivations leading to the two types of reform are so different. If you are a government official opposed to e-democracy but supportive of e-government, I think conflating the two terms is good political strategy. But if you’re a democratic reformer, you want to reserve separate terms for e-government and e-democracy.”

I have little trouble agreeing with him having found e-democracy often sidelined, one way or the other, in the e-government debate by officials, politicials and academics. Some using e-democracy as a sales pitch for e-government, some the other way, whilst some just mix the two up. I continue to ask, as Snider does,
whether politicians are going to delegate power that easily!

If you are of a less cynical outlook you may be more appreciative of the new 388 page book from Stanford University “Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice” from editors Todd Davies and Seeta Pena Gangadharan (Creative Commons licensed) and its free for the PDF!

In government circles we have long been expected to follow Prince 2 project management principles and define what we were expecting to achieve before we set out. In central government ‘gateway reviews’ are supposed to be de facto prior to spending the bulk of the project monies. Then at the end, some sort of post-project review is supposed to be carried out to present the success or otherwise and any lessons learned etc…

I think perhaps first of all we need to know what the great British public expect of e-Democracy or even Democracy and attempt to champion that.

As with everything e-, there is an assumption that it will be used, is cheaper and better.

Where is the evidence? OK, I can contact my local councillor by email, it doesn’t mean that the answer is any better than if I’d waited to a response to a voicemail or letter, they’ll still be waiting on a response from a council worker. What it might mean is that I’ve jumped the queue on the person without access to email.

As I’ve stated before there is great potential for improving services, including the democratic ones but fundamentally it’s the process behind it, and it has to recognise that some will never be able to use it and that shouldn’t reduce their chances of being heard.

Rather than assumptions, I’d like to see more evidence from this country (cultures and systems vary, along with connectivity). This includes more ‘measured’ pilots.

What I do think is missing is any review (post-implementation review, lessons learned etc) that might guide those still trying to steer the little e-ships.

If X could say we did Y and it didn’t work, so try Z. If we had clear case studies that weren’t value laden…etc

Trying to coax councillors into believing that e- is worth it is hard. Trying to get their electorate to accept the expenditure is equally hard. It can only be supported by successful pilots.

I suspected at the end of the e-Government Unit that much documentation would vapourise, so saved what I wanted for research purposes then. The post BVPI157 review appears to have been: “well done, you all did it, cheers, goodbye!

Having marked the anniversary of the assassination of the Great Emancipator with the launch of the Great E-mancipator blog, I’ve been promoting it across the various lists and mailing lists I’ve been using and accumulating.

In some cases this has resulted in completion of the SURVEY, in others personal emails (all polite, thanks John, Dan and others) and in the case of the e-democracy list, some supportive discussion, thanks Paul and Jeremy.

I’ll pick up some threads from Paul here, since they are very relevant.

Channels – “who else uses channels?” “blunt usage”? – has anybody any favourite/preferred alternatives? I had the same problem with my research supervisors and the term “silo“. I also have a concern about channels turning into silos – now that’s worrying if you don’t like either expression! I still believe that customer/citizen contact should be managed as a whole with the I.T. that supports it.

Drop-outs from online processes better than user satisfaction – but what about the other channels? The person wanting face-to-face at five-to-nine?

“We still do not have a single central resource for gov webbies like the Australian state of Victoria has had for several years > http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/” – again but I like to see this across all communication/service channels?

“Strategy is extremely patchy rather than holistic” – this is a ket element of my dissertation, its a Civil Service modus operandi if I’m correct. They have no idea what to do, so ask everyone else to provide exemplars, and then cherry-pick the best or in the worst instance the low-hanging fruit! At the end of the exercise, everybody is doing something different at public expense but central government have a model for all to follow, if it isn’t too late? Prime examples of this in e-government were Implementing Electronic Government Statements 1 & 2, the Priority Service Outcomes and a string of ‘national projects’.

The discussion continued and I’m looking forward to refining the model with such feedback.

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About me

The blogger is Mick Phythian, a Research Associate at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. and former ICT Manager at Ryedale District Council in North Yorkshire, England. He was also a founder member of the Local CIO Council and regional Chair of Socitm.

Any opinions expressed on this weblog are purely those of the author.

He is not the Great Emancipator! The Great Emancipator was President Abraham Lincoln. The blog is so-called because some people perceive e-government, transformational government or, heaven forbid, government to be the emancipator of us all...